Ite In Faucibus
by Apollo Wings
Summary: (literally: Go for the throat) Miriam Hawke is vicious, lacks scruples and is generally flexible about what is illegal and what isn't. So when she ascends to the Viscount's throne, Kirkwall as we know it is changed forever. Sequel to The Daughter of the Mountain. Do review! WIP
1. Two Deserters

Author note: This is the sequel of The Daughter of the Mountain, which - if any of you are reading that, know is ending soon enough once I've done the coronation, Soldier's Peak and the Archdemon.

I found out how I'd make DA2 enjoyable to write! Alright, it's wholly AU, and just about sits on the loosest of original canon: Ie, if it were any looser it may fall off. Then again, The Daughter of the Mountain is incredibly AU too. So I suppose, in a round-a-bout way... Kirkwall canon needed a shake up too. It has been supposed by a friend that if I changed the names of things such as characters, places, enemies and the such, they could be original stories. Eh, I enjoy the world of Dragon Age much too much to even think of such a thing.

Disclaimer: Owned by Bioware, EA and David Gaider. If I owned Dragon Age I suppose I'd still write fanfiction on it too. It'd just be official and I could make money from it. As it stands, my muse (Magda) and I are quite happy to be penniless fanfiction writers. The love of readers means more than for us to go Scrooge McDucking - unless someone has a spare pool of bullion coin?

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**Introduction: Ostagar Dragon 9:30, Two Deserters**

Miriam was furious, if one person could rile her up and get completely under her skin it was Carver. The eldest Hawke seemed to have no control over anything any more. And she'd sworn to her father that everything would be alright while he lay on his deathbed, The Wasting Sickness taking the once vital man.

But it seemed yet another person could get under her skin. She felt incredibly observed by the burly Wardens that stood with strange aura about them that distanced them from ordinary people. It was that mage, his air of self-importance, the one with a nose that looked like it'd been broken for half his life and never reset properly. He chivvied her away from giving her foolish brother a proper talking down.

But the darkspawn were approaching. The archer set her shoulders, internal muscles coiling tight in anticipation of a fight. There were many things she was thankful that had happened in her life and because of the people in her life.

Maker rest his late soul, her Father had been the cause of half the turmoil and greatness of her formative years, setting her on a different level than ordinary children who weren't the offspring of a runaway noblewoman and an apostate. He taught her to read while her mother taught her elocution and etiquette. Not for any reason other than that was how they'd both been brought up, new to the idea of parenting. Nobles weren't expected to look after their own children, governesses and nannies did that, and mages weren't allowed to begot a single thing lest their magical curse infect Thedas. So perhaps it was the oddness of it that made her parents awkward with children, treating the young Miriam Hawke as a miniature adult rather than a child.

They'd been poor too, incredibly so. Father took every job he could, losing all concepts of morality if it fed his family, Mother took in laundry and taught reading, writing and arithmetic to local children wherever they lived at the time. And Miriam was a scribe for Magistrate Carruthers of a spit of a village called Greenlea. She picked up everything she wrote, from law to punishments for breaking it. It also taught her that certain words had a lot of power, some like 'apparently' and 'alleged' were the most powerful.

As she grew, Mother fell pregnant again, this time having twins, Bethany and Carver. Like Father, Bethany had magic. The twins were always closer, more coddled and treated as children, Miriam had been a learning experience for her parents. It also gave her the best friends she could hope for even if Carver could be a spiteful little git or Bethany could be a sapless twit. They were her siblings and she loved them endlessly since she gazed upon the wriggling bundles in her Mother's tired post-birthing arms.

"How could he be so Blighted stupid!" Miriam growled in her throat, cursing turning her back for five seconds on her younger brother. The last time she'd done that the fool had gone and not only joined the army but in the week he'd been missing as a fifteen year old with shoulders build for a plough not a greatsword, was get that ridiculous tattoo on his arse of a mabari.

"Miri, calm down!" She looked over at one of her fellow archers in the Lothering Irregulars, a man that even a head and half shorter than her could try and charm the knickers off of a Revered Mother. Like the one that was fuming about the place occasionally muttering 'heathen' loud enough to strike the fear of the Maker in the hearts of less stout men.

"I calm down when my bastard of a little brother stops being a fucking eijit!" She fumed to the raised eyebrows of Johnathan.

"Language." He tutted.

Miriam smirked, feeling her shoulders lose their tension. "According to all laws of the country there is no prohibition of crude or foul language. In fact, it's encouraged when your eighteen year old brother joins the Grey Wardens to 'forge his own path out of his elder sister's shadow'."

"Talk law at me." Johnathan purred. Miriam laughed, the staccato sound barking in the column of her throat.

"Sweet Maker! Oh all that is holy! They're coming!" A man ran through their line of archers in the Lothering Irregulars, shouting as he went. While Miriam was worried about the darkspawn as much as the next person, they were something that could be defeated. You didn't have to think about the implications of killing one of the foul beasts, you pulled an arrow from your quiver and pulled the bowstring taut, you could lose yourself to the harsh rhythm and indentation forming in your fingers.

That was something she was grateful for too. The Blackstone Irregulars, a mercenary group based everywhere you could shake a stick and then have someone complain about it. Mercenaries were in the business of sorting problems, if someone didn't like something it was a simple job of threatening, extortion or the even more simplistic mindless violence. All required a certain panache that so many people lacked. Her time as a person for hire was enlightening, just as much as learning law at the knee of the scribe.

Then they saw them, like the mythical horrors she'd read about in her books, of kraken and giants. They were like men in stature, their skin rotted with congealed blood, eyes milky and dead. They mouth opened unnaturally wide to reveal spiny blood-red teeth and tongue that wriggled black and serpentine in their maws. The darkspawn were fearsome in sight, and perhaps it was this that gave them any advantage, because the chill seeped into her bones as if her muscles were rigored.

Then they descended out of the mists, gore and all. The shout went out and the armies assembled hastily, the smell of incense burning from wafted crucibles the Chantry Sisters rushed about ominously with, the hummed chanting spilling on their lips like a dread chant. Miriam froze, even as another shout spread like a wave and the archers were called to take aim.

There was no aim, no finesse in what they did, it was mechanical the way they pulled their bowstrings back, without the music as it twanged and scraped cheeks. The metal bit through the thin leather pads on her fingers, the blood dripping down Miriam's forearm. And still they called for arrows to be volleyed. The darkspawn were skewered like the butterflies and moths pinned down in a lepidopterist's collection.

The Lothering Irregulars could all feel the clammy air, the way their breaths whooshed out in plumes of harsh white and mingled with the miasma of the Korcari wastelands. Miriam felt as if those humming chants were her dirge when the mabari where let loose, the darkspawn having advanced by sheer number through their volleys.

The noble dogs were powerful beasts, compact despite their truly enormous size and muscular weapons of war. These were not the lapdogs that graced cushions and nibbled daintily on bones as they met the darkspawn teeth to crude swords, blood that was black as sin and spurting a wild red a maelstrom of violence.

Miriam quelled the urge to be sick but she was Ferelden! Dogs were protectors, they were fierce creatures true but not mere weapons! If she had any scruples it was seeing the beasts mown down.

Then the front lines were engaged with the monsters from fairytales. The Wardens in their mostly vivid blue and shining silverite descending on the beasts like a fox-hound that had found his quarry, ripping it relentlessly from side to side until he was sure it was dead.

Miriam kept her rhythmic firing of arrows as the first drops of rain she noticed stuck her hair damp to her skull and ran in rivulets down her face. There was a great whoosh of noise and the stampeding of feet. She looked in time to see a great beacon come to life in the sleeting sky.

The archer drew a stiletto dagger and the sword she'd been issued with by the army when she reached back to her quiver and her fingers found no purchase on a feathered shaft.

It was at that moment, Miriam Hawke saw a battered corpse thrown in her direction, from one of the kossith darkspawn beasts she heard called simply 'Ogre' and relying on the advice given her she leapt sideways, mud and blood splashing up to her hips.

The archer was ready with her dual weapons, more confident of the understated deadliness of the stiletto than the bulky lug of her sword held in her main hand simply for the added dexterousness of the extra weight.

"Maker!" She crashed into Jonathan who was on the floor, fallen under the corpse of an elf that had an arrow not only in his face but protruding from the back of his head, staining his long white hair red where the mud hadn't yet stuck to him. He wore the Warden heraldry.

"Maker what?" She shouted, finding her voice drowning in the wet battle around them.

"That's the fucking King!" Jonathan pushed the dead elf from him, his haunted eyes lingering on the elf and the elven blood that splashed over his leather jerkin that was being washed off by the heavy rain.

Miriam turned her head rather to where he looked to where his shaking arm had pointed. And she saw a profile with his face half in the mud as if serenely asleep. The face graced the sovereigns, just as Teyrn Cousland graced the silvers and Teyrn Loghain had his scowl etched on the coppers. It was a face of mythical money, but everyone who'd ever had a sovereign showed it off in the piss spots she'd lived in. It was a face she'd gawped at before the coin was spun in grubby fingers to show the heraldry of the Theirins.

"What are we fighting for any more -" She heard Jonathan wail when a crude sword was suddenly poking through his middle. Their warriors at the front of the Lothering Irregulars had fallen, as Miriam noted with a moue of distaste on her lips.

The archers not trained in any swordplay were being cut down like bulrushes on the edge of a river. The archer set herself taut as she lashed out at the grim, bloody face of the darkspawn that had cut down one of the get jovial acquaintances she could put a name to. While she didn't make friends often enough to use the phrase, she could grade the level of her acquaintances. Jonathan had graded highly.

A woman with vivid ginger hair, soaked to her skull and bulky with muscle pushed past, a human battering ram heading through the darkspawn that had infiltrated this part of their army. "The Wardens are falling, the King has fallen, if you want to live run!" She commanded in a deep voice that demanded to be obeyed.

Miriam couldn't think of anything better to do as the rain had seeped into her bones through frigid skin and slippery leather jerkin and britches. The shieldmaiden battered one of the darkspawn down from their surviving duo, surrounded by the bodies of darkspawn and ally alike, battered and indiscernible from each other in their deaths except the odd open eye. Her shield was close to them both, as if protecting her in some strange way Miriam couldn't understand why as she didn't know the name of her.

"I said run!" The woman commanded again. Miriam stayed at the warrior's side, her stiletto the main cause of the darkspawn falling as she deftly swiped and jabbed it at necks and armpits to cripple completely or kill but her sword was some use in battering the darkspawn back where the warrior woman hadn't been quick enough to defend the both of them and mere human nature for self-preservation had kicked in.

"Run with me, we'll be deserters! You'll never live without my help and I shan't either!" She didn't want to think, not as she was still processing the battle around them, the fact only a few fires and ice could be seen bursting with magical light. The mages must have already fallen, even as the flank of Teyrn Loghain's army had charged when the beacon was lit. The archer looked over the battlefield with critical eyes, despite the blood and mud she hardly saw the Warden colours nor that of many troops she knew of. Carver was dead and there was no point in standing around to die too. She could mourn when she was assured she was still breathing.

"It's my job to defend the King!" The woman shouted.

"The King is dead, you said it yourself!" Miriam shouted back.

Then the duo saw the dark figure swoop down on the few standing and fighting where the Wardens had been, picking up two figures that had been faltering, peppered with arrows the both but somehow moving. In the grey, oppressive rain, Miriam supposed it looked like a massive black hawk.

"We run together! You can call me Hawke! Lieutenant Miriam Hawke of the Lothering Irregulars!" Miriam dropped the sword, it was doing less good than her stiletto and slowing her down. With the same, fatigued arm she latched it around the armoured one of the shieldmaiden that had had the job of defending King Cailan.

The warrior scowled heavily, revealing rain, mud and blood splattered freckles and calm green eyes. Her entire countenance was that of someone who knew they were doing wrong but somehow had been convinced to do otherwise. Then she nodded, rain dripping off her chin. The shieldmaiden dropped her shield and the two took off through the field of squishy dead bodies. "Ser Aveline Vallen," The warrior declared as she pulled Miriam from having her foot caught in the gaping open ribcage of a knight. "King's personal guard."

Miriam bit back the comment that she'd not done her job properly. None of them had if the darkspawn were winning the battle they were deserting. "I have family in Lothering. You can come with me, the darkspawn won't just stay here!"

The archer huffed, her breath heaving as the warrior dragged her faster and faster so much that if she stopped holding onto the woman then she was sure her face would be in the mud somewhere while the darkspawn impaled her faceless skull and piked it in their armies.

The two deserters ran together, hoping nobody still fighting for their lives would recognise the figure in leathers so black they could have been made from the opposite of light despite the mud splashed over most of them and the rain that damped them to her body and the dull mud and blood splattered suit of armour with a flame of wet ginger hair.

* * *

"You'll have to get rid of your armour." Miriam stated as she stoked the scrawny rabbit she'd managed to catch by using her stiletto dagger as an arrow and being a bit of a show off. Aveline was a remarkably resourceful woman, for someone so impossibly rigid and battering-ram-esque. The King's guardsman had a knack for finding dry kindling and the patience of a saint as she sat there, sword striking her gauntlet until a spark ignited on the kindling, then blowing on it until larger sticks had started to crackle and burn, the soft woody smoke filling their gap in the dense trees.

"Excuse me?" Aveline said indignantly, her darker ginger eyebrows both rising near enough to her hairline.

"It's King's livery it's it? That means people will know we scarpered and it's stamped as well," Miriam pointed to the discarded gauntlets that were drying next to their scrawny rabbit cradled in broad leaves as it cooking inside the makeshift fire. It was clear to see the Theirin heraldry stamped into the metal. The archer looked at the shieldmaiden, assessing her in the thick leather underpadding of her previous station. "Your underpadding should protect you well enough until we get to Lothering. My brother had spare armour that you'd fit into greave-wise but we can pick up one of my thicker chestplates for you.

"Had?" Aveline said softly, despite her voice being anything but soft.

"He was at Ostagar too, one of the Grey Wardens." Miriam sniffed, poking the rabbit again. It was taking too long and she was incredibly hungry, but poisoning herself with raw meat didn't sound appealing.

"My condolences then." Aveline looked down ashamedly, most likely thinking it an old wound rather than something so fresh.

"He'd only just joined them. I imagine if the bastard hadn't he'd have escaped with us if we could've moved his stubborn arse," Miriam shrugged and moved closer to the warrior. "As it stands I have to tell Bethany, his twin that he's dead."

"I don't envy you." The ginger warrior admitted with a warm blush on her freckled cheeks.

"Nobody does." Miriam shrugged again. A silence descended over them like a stifling blanket while neither had anything to say. Eventually after terse minutes Aveline cleared her throat.

"Are you getting rid of your armour?" She gestured at her black leathers drying while she wore her thin underpadding of her own previous station, cold in the Ferelden dusk. It was just a plain black vest so her arms were prickled with gooseflesh.

"Do I need to? I think it's quite stylish and you'd be utterly appalled to hear how difficult it is to get leathers that fit around these damned hips and breasts." She gestured vaguely at the curves that made up half her body in size. Aveline snorted softly, a humourless bubble of laughter that died instantly in the strange calm the two women found themselves in.

"I suppose that's alright then. My husband said he was coming to Ostagar too, could we wait for him to pass through Lothering?" Miriam kept her eyes trained on the rabbit, the meat starting to actually cook as the sticks spat and hissed with the steam of their dampness rising as they caught alight.

The woman had helped save her life in these past, miserably wet hours since they'd left the battlefield, and she in turn had done the same. Something like that deserved a good turn. "What's his name?"

"Ser Wesley Vallen." Aveline said with a warm fondness in her otherwise brusque way.

"Then we'll wait for Wesley, my Mother and younger sister will probably want to pack something before we leave forever anyway." It was unspoken between the two deserters that they would be tried, convicted and slaughtered for their actions recently if the other said anything to the wrong person. And they watched each other with the same suspicion before they forgave some of the animosity for long enough to catch fitful, light sleep in the damp grasses before they moved forward toward the farming Bannorn.

During their trudging with half-full bellies Aveline watched the almost unknown archer, with her blackness from long silky locks to the almost polished blackness of her leathers - even if most of it was mud and blood stained now. It still had an innate blackness. Then her skin was so pale you'd assume the woman never went into the sun, and while she spoke like she could be anyone, her voice had a quality that made you feel like you were being robbed of everything down to your smalls. Yet from a conversation on the edge of consciousness as they both tried to watch and sleep simultaneously she knew the orbed necklace of topaz was a treasured gift from her late Father, the small splash of colour on the woman Aveline had spotted nestled where her collarbones met.

Everything about Miriam Hawke said that she was a dangerous woman, a woman who could easily kill someone without a second thought for them. So Aveline wanted to know why she was still alive while they stayed in their strange, unspoken stalemate. "Hawke."

The woman hmm'd with a high pitch of disinterest.

"What did you do before you were in the army?" She knew that some criminals were forced into military service, but never did they become Lieutenants, not without enough time to prove themselves and Hawke didn't look older than the criminals that scrubbed the latrines.

"Oddjobsman." Hawke answered in the same disinterested manner.

"What sort of jobs?" Aveline probed curiously. Curiosity did kill the cat though.

"Odd ones," And Aveline regretted the ghost of a smile on the archer's lips, she looked at the thin, impossibly sharp stiletto dagger in the sheath strapped to the woman's arm with a faint thought of alarm, imagining it going through the soft flesh under her jaw or penetrating up her nose and into her brain. "You look scared to death Aveline."

Aveline didn't answer, merely attempted to laugh good-naturedly. She was stuck with this woman now, the warrior was sure if she stayed at least Hawke would give her the courtesy of telling her when the stiletto dagger was unsheathed for the purpose of her death compared to the relatively cold-blooded dagger in the kidneys.


	2. A Stranger In A Strange Land

Author note: If you haven't read The Daughter of the Mountain, I urge you to read up to the end of Lothering just so you know how Ostagar happened from the point of view of someone who knows what happened rather than the speculative Hawke who doesn't want to see someone who'd gut her for deserting (ie Loghain or the army).

Disclaimer: Oh Electronic Arts, Hallowed be thy game, May Bioware come, and David Gaider's world be done, in Thedas as it is in my PC.

- Even I found that a bit much... eh!

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**Lothering, Dragon 9:30 - A Stranger In A Strange Land**

Miriam didn't relish knocking on the door, nor the bone-squeezing hug of her Mother and Sister gave her in welcome, her Mother overjoyed to see her eldest and fussing over her, complaining about the state of her hair and the fact she'd covered her leather trousers in mud. Introductions were hastily made in their way into the plain farmhouse.

"Mother I have something to tell you." She said, trying to be calm, trying not to make them upset before she said anything. It would crush the both of them anyway, crush them that their only son or twin brother had died. Crush them that Miriam failed in looking after him.

"Does your friend want something to eat?" Her Mother carried on, picking up tea-stained mugs as she walked toward the kitchen and bubbling kettle on the stove top. "I have some cherry pie, and do you take honey or milk in your tea dear?"

Behind her, Aveline said a shamefully muttered no and refused some tea. For all it was worth, Leandra Hawke did nothing to acknowledge it. Miriam jostled into the way. "Perhaps I should make the tea Mother? Could you get Bethany for me Aveline?"

"Miriam, this is a guest! I'll get Bethany." Leandra sighed, shooting an apologetic glance toward the ginger-haired warrior woman.

"Sit down Mother," She put it slightly more forcefully and the air itself seemed to stop moving with the life it held, becoming stagnant as her Mother sat onto her comfortable chair, a threadbare crochet blanket thrown over it. "Aveline can you get Bethany for me please? And have some tea, you are our guest."

"Of course, strong and sweet please then." Aveline twisted her lips thoughtfully as she went into the hall and peered into odd rooms before she managed to find the apostate, gently leading the eighteen year old into the living room.

The room was silent as the kettle boiled, the top whistling a shrill chorus that broke the strange tension the two who hadn't been on a battlefield less than a day previously and the two that had. "Is Carver getting some jam or bread? He always does when he comes back from leave. Last time Aveline, it was proper raspberry jam, not even the fake stuff with wooden pips in." Bethany filled the silence with nervously, playing her long tapered fingers together in her lap.

Aveline looked away as Miriam poured the tea into four cups, one small and dainty, covered in that expensive gilt and delicate roses. It was Bethany's - a gift from Father when she broke her old one, having just discovered her magic and dropping it in shock when the tea within had frozen solid. It only had a small crack in it, fixed lovingly by their apostate Father.

The next was the sort of cup not used for drinking but merely to act as a show of drinking, small and skinny, sitting on a saucer like it owned it, in one of those garish colours designed to display that the person sipping from it was actually joyful and enjoyed a good laugh. It should have said something jovial like 'Life's a beach, then you die!' or 'You don't have to be sadistic to talk to me but it helps!' Obviously, that cup was Miriam's.

The next cup was as dainty as the handpainted rose one except rather than being so lovingly cared for that it could possibly be the only possession Bethany might cherish more than her life, Leandra Hawke's cup was chipped to buggery, a spiderweb of dark cracks in the glazing where yellow daffodils and creamy lilies flourished under an artist's hand.

The last was the mug of a working man, large and stained from having had it's contents left for an entire day before it's owner drank it in one miserably cold gulp. Carver had taken it after Father died, having smashed his own in a fit of piqued rage at the unfairness of Malcolm Hawke's death. Aveline was passed this one, causing the two women not sporting weaponry of any kind to look between each other with raised eyebrows and a worried glance that said too much. "Where is Carver?" Leandra asked pointedly. Miriam didn't jump the arrow though, Mother got upset when Carver stayed with the army rather than returning home.

Miriam sighed, it would have to come out, not that the boy was a fool, joining the Grey Wardens, how she'd watched the poor bastards get slaughtered quicker than everyone else had been - like the darkspawn had known they were there. No, they'd know the boy had died a man, a hero. It was better for them, let ghosts rest easy. "He's, he became a Grey Warden, then only yesterday there was a large raid by the darkspawn..." Miriam trailed off, her throat drying. She wasn't heartless, merely a cynic, her family was important to her, more important than she usually let them know.

"Miriam and I deserted in the middle of the battle. I'm dreadfully sorry Mistress Hawke but the Grey Wardens were the first to fall, followed by our King." Aveline finished solemnly, looking down her leather underpadding at the splotches of tea that coagulated on the top like thin floating islands. Miriam lifted her tiny cup in garish pink up to her lips, swallowing the tea in the ensuing silence that thundered like a great _siiiiiiiiiiiip_.

"You left him!" Her Mother nearly screamed.

"It was the only way I could live! Aveline and I saved each other so many times running away from the darkspawn Mother!" Miriam looked away, cursing how petulant she sounded. "I couldn't save him, even if I tried he'd be dead. I thought you'd rather I didn't die in vain."

"It wouldn't have been in vain if it worked." Mother said so quietly that it took her a few moments to cover her mouth with the backs of her fingers, not realising she'd even said it.

It sank into the duo about a minute of bitter silence later. Bethany just closed in on herself, her shoulders near touching in front of her chin melancholy, and Mother's face disappeared in the grubby off-white of her pinafore, her bawling lost as Aveline stood there unsure of everything and Miriam had to watch them in stony silence, her throat a lump and bile coating her mouth.

_It wouldn't have been in vain if it worked._ Oh Maker, what have I done... Miriam looked down, shamed at the honest, if cutting words. If anything got to her it was Carver, Bethany or Mother. They got under her skin. That What If would haunt her for a long time. _What if I'd tried..._

"The darkspawn will be moving north, Lothering will surely get swept up with them. If you want to remember your son, live yourselves, pack what you can and flee." Aveline said, putting the ownerless mug down with a full thud on the dresser that contained the good crockery and the tablecloth for special occasions like name-days and Satinalia or First Day.

Miriam stayed numb, watching the relative stranger she owed a life-debt and gave a life-debt to draw her Mother into a fierce hug, the elder woman clutching tight to her strong arms and weeping as if her world ended. Bethany fled into her room most likely. Miriam put her cup down and followed, hoping her younger Sister would one day forgive her.

* * *

Miriam found her little Sister on her bed, face buried in a pillow and chest heaving so hard the elder could imagine the blood-sucking mythical villains of the stories they devoured as children creeping through an artistically open bedroom window and finding a world of delights. She snorted in her head at the flippancy of it and sat on the coverlets, the quilted blankets Bethany had painstakingly made with Mother on long cold nights by candlelight, waiting for Father to come home, or Carver to be dragged home, or Miriam to come back from a long working day.

"Hey," She rubbed a line on her back, firm but gentle, trailing up until Bethany's silky waves tangled in cold, pale fingers where the nails had been cut short and square. "I'm sorry Bethany."

"It's alright." Came the muffled reply, not any spite in it nor any passion that affirmed the words. Something might have been better, vitriolic anger might have been an improvement of the coldness radiating from a source it had never come from before.

"I know it isn't Bethany, and I can't change that." Miriam brushed the liquid-like mass of wave under her hand, drawing the apostate into a trance of a seated position.

She reached for a silver comb, decorated with peonies and smiling sunshine - their most expensive item they two girls had ever owned other than Miriam's leathers from a lot of hard graft with the Blackstone Irregulars, made especially for the roguish woman to enable her to use the shadows better, to get them even more money to live by. And she combed Bethany's hair, despite the woman being six years her junior being red in the face, pink cheeks streaked with hot tears. "Shhh... It'll be alright. It'll always be alright Bethany." She combed into the late hours of the night, eventually by moonlight streaming into the shared bedroom, repeating the babbled mantra until both fell asleep in a slumped, desperate huddle, neither ever wanting to be far away from the other ever again.

Miriam would always be soft for her family. But when it came to everyone else... there was a special part of the Void for them.

* * *

They'd been packing. Aveline helped the smaller Hawke family pack their prized possessions in wicker hampers and suitcases that they could, the four of them, five with the as of yet elusive Ser Wesley Vallen, could carry from Lothering and somewhere else. Somewhere the two soldiers wouldn't get strung up for the deserting, or left to rot in a gibbet.

Aveline watched for her husband, asking that the Chantry would keep an eye out for him passing. Miriam was mildly pleased as it meant less speculation and covert glances at her younger Sister. If those bastards took her now...

She walked out into the mild sunshine, hoping for some solace in the summery breezes that belied what had happened day's travel south. It wasn't an odd thing to see her outside, it was that many people looked at her as if the behaviour was odd, and men watched with a primal instinct toward the natural sway of her child-bearing hips. They were hips that would never go out of fashion even if her nose was something you could set an architect's rule by and her chin was too pointed, or that her waist wasn't waspish. Her hips and breasts were popular throughout history, signs of a good woman who could birth and raise children into apple-cheeked heartbreakers in their own right.

Not that Miriam would have anything to do with snot-nosed things like children, rather disgusting truth be told.

"Shok ebasit hissra. Meraad astaarit, meraad itwasit, aban aqun. Maraas shokra. Anaan esaam Qun." The voice... that voice, it was melodic, and rather sad too. Accepting of that sadness, perhaps drawing strength from it. It anything, Miriam could read a voice, could read a person like a book. And she loved books with an unholy passion sometimes.

"What does that mean?" She asked the incorporeal voice, hoping for an answer. Nothing but the breeze seemed to answer for a while.

"What do you wish of me human?" So the voice was... Miriam looked around and found the only thing that _could_ have a voice was the creature residing in the gibbet, his waste underneath and the barest of clothes covering his modesty. It all, it meant the supremely muscled form was on show, sun having made patches a dark silver compared to pale silver elsewhere, violet, foreign eyes that had evolved to have blacks rather than whites and tightly braided white hair that was clipped close to the skull of the behemoth creature.

And yet he seemed so intelligent. And she knew what it was, the creature was Qunari, a race of warmongering creatures from the far northern reaches of Thedas, Seheron and Par Vollen. They signed the Llomerryn Accords to stop a war that would have continued to consume Thedas, both black and white Divines of Orlais and Tevinter hating the race enough to work in tandem. Truly, the creatures were fearsome, something to be wary of. But to put him in a cage for merely existing seemed harsh. It was almost as bad as the treatment mages got, imprisoned in circles for being born.

"I wanted to know what that... prayer? What that prayer meant Qunari. If you would please." She said with a sniff, sitting herself in front of him, cross-legged in a mirror of him, perhaps hoping, or praying herself for some enlightening words that would soothe this ache she still felt over Carver's death. A death that weighed with What If over her soul.

"You seem... more respectful than other basra," The Qunari declared, parched lips whetted with a grey tongue for a moment. "Perhaps you are not the dathrasi that scurry and fear me then."

"Perhaps not." Miriam replied coolly, knowing his tone meant insult and compliment, knowing the nature of people to understand that the Qunari did not think highly of himself or he'd not speak to her, remaining silent or in his strange tongued prayer. But she was stronger than that. The Qunari did not frighten her.

He regarded her for a while. "What do they call you basra?" He asked.

"Hawke, and yourself?"

"Sten of the Beresaad." He replied, his entire demeanour changed in that instance, proud of it. People weren't proud of a name, so it was...

"Is that your profession? Say, if someone called me Merchant or Fisherman?" Miriam asked, genuinely curious. Normally reading someone was easy. It was as if she were reading a brick wall though.

The Qunari tilted his head to the side like a curious child. "Yes." He sounded vaguely shocked with his deep voice that came from somewhere in that gigantic chest.

"So Sten, that prayer?" Miriam urged Sten in his confusion. Confusion lead to truths in her line of work.

The Qunari remained silent, the breeze lifting the thick white braids on his sun-tanned silver skin for a moment. He seemed so at peace and yet like her, so dangerous to behold. "Struggle is an illusion. The tide rises, the tide falls, but the sea is changeless. There is nothing to struggle against. Victory is in the Qun."

It was Miriam's turn to be shocked but her mouth and brain whirled without seemingly any control. "That seems incredibly poignant, are you dying?"

"Yes."

The archer remained shocked. "Why?"

"I am in a cage, I am not fed nor watered, I will die. It is a certainty of life even without the first two facts."

"Do you want to hold off on dying for a short while? Maybe die amongst your people?" If Miriam knew how to do anything without any apparent thought, it was manipulate people. Somehow gaining trust and even bonding people to the idea of her. As a child she had a following of other children around her before they moved house again. The archer often wondered what the world might be like if she managed to stay in one place continually.

The Qunari seemed to evaluate her words for a moment. "They will kill me on sight. I am Tal'Vashoth, without a soul."

"The darkspawn will come to Lothering and they'll kill you on sight too. I think I'd prefer to extend my life and die amongst those whom I love." Miriam pointed out, the thought somehow chilling her. Her control caught up with her brain and mouth. While she didn't understand what Tal'Vashoth was, she understood what 'without a soul' meant.

"The Qunari do not love." Sten said flatly.

"You surely have families or you wouldn't have children. _You_ wouldn't exist," She said, feeling petulant. Cats... raped each other rather than having families, but the mother cat was often a caring individual for her litter. She re-clarified her point because she didn't know about Qunari family structure. "You have a mother, everyone has a mother and at least a father to help said mother make you - you must have one parent."

"There are those that made me, but parents do not exist, we are raised by the Tamassran who educate us for the roles we are born to, as I am born to be a warrior, as others are born to be artisans or merchants."

"Like a governess," Miriam clarified for herself, although from the way Sten had said it, it was more compulsory. "Do no Qunari raise their own children?"

"No."

"Ah."

"They would not be true Qunari." Sten clarified for her.

"Do you want to return to your... Tamassran then?"

The Qunari remained silent for a while, long enough that the silence ceased to be merely there but uncomfortable. Miriam was not one to falter even under the foreign gaze. "No. I wish to become Qunari again. I had purpose, and now I am in a cage."

"How will you become Qunari again?" Miriam asked, trying to understand.

"I told you, I have lost my soul. Without it, I am not Qunari and if I returned to my people I would die."

"So find your soul, I would not expect a true Qunari to remain complacent over being locked in a cage," She stood up sinuously, her knees clicking until she was towering over the creature sitting in the gibbet. "A true Qunari would fight against not having a soul until he had one again."

The giant creature stood too, inside the gibbet he was even taller than his natural height, looming unnaturally over the archer. "I am a true Qunari."

"I thought you said you became Tal'Vashoth? Prove you're a true Qunari!" She hissed at him, brandishing a hooked lockpick and and her stiletto dagger.

Sten seemed to loom further over her as she defiantly stuck the pick and dagger in the lock of the gibbet and tinkered, never taking her gaze from him until there was the successful click of the tumblers inside allowing the door of the gibbet to open.

Never had anyone come out of the gibbet, not breathing and certainly not with flesh on their bones. They usually came out as a skeleton, having been a reminder to the people of Lothering not to do crimes. No specific crime, just crimes in general was the thought behind seeing a corpse disintegrate into nothingness in a gibbet.

The iron cage swayed on the strong chains holding it upright on the frame, the Qunari motionless despite the swaying inside it. Sten stepped out, the fact he'd most probably been without food and water for Maker knows how long not even apparent with the strength of his step. "Because you have opened a cage does not mean I am free." He said, still looming.

"It means you're free to get your soul, free to return to your people if you so wish it. But no, you are caged still with a debt of gratitude to me, and if I ever require it Sten, you will return it." Miriam stood back, tactfully as the Qunari looked around him.

"Why did you release me?" He finally asked.

"I have a distinct hatred for cages and a very lax idea on what crimes are." She said with a sniff and a crossing of her arms under her chest. The stiletto dagger remained in her grip but the hooked lockpick slipped back into the loop on her belt.

"I will not be held in bondage." Sten remarked, walking past her.

"No bondage here. Just the swapping of a favour. I gave you the start to becoming Qunari again, you return the debt, of something I may wish." Her chin jutted firmly, even if the Qunari ignored her except as something that had helped him.

"You are basvaarad Hawke. Should this favour of a chance be collected, know that a true Qunari will never go back on his word." Sten walked slowly off, no more clothing on his back nor weaponry to be seen. No food and water.

Miriam supposed that a warrior this far from his homeland might know how to survive until he could return home, but to be a Stranger in a Strange Land was not something she could think to be.

And with the crime of desertion on her even at this moment, she would have to be, would have to leave Ferelden, the only country she'd ever known. Where was a mystery but even as she watched the Qunari leave Lothering she found no space for fear. It was possible, even for the soulless.

Shok ebasit hissra. Meraad astaarit, meraad itwasit, aban aqun. Maraas shokra. Indeed, struggle is an illusion. The tide rises, the tide falls, but the sea is changeless. There is nothing to struggle against.

There was nothing to struggle against. Miriam went to return home, feeling less burdened about life, about What Ifs concerning Ostagar and Carver's death, less tense than she'd been for a while if truth be told.

Miriam Hawke watched the gentle wobble of corn and wheat as she walked to the farmstead. There was a templar on his direct route toward it. The archer broke into a light-footed run, slipping into the back alley where all it smelt of was piss and shit from emptied bedpans and the leftover peelings and carcasses from a dinner.

If he was so much as thinking of Bethany there'd be a surprise for the bastard when he opened the door to find an arrow aimed at his head and a stiletto ready to end him under his bastard chin.


	3. Back From The Dead

Author note: Yes yes, I know, my updates have been lacking but I have excuses! Somewhere... *rummages in bag of excuses*

Sorry anyway... I won't promise it won't happen again but Origins captures my attentions so easily...

Disclaimer: As always, Bioware owns everything but my soul.

* * *

**Lothering, Dragon 9:30 - Back From The Dead**

Miriam slipped in through the back window of the Hawke farmstead, using the latch by the side of the windowpane that only she, Bethany, Carver and Mother knew of. What she did not expect to see was Bethany being yanked through the doorway, the gauntleted hands of Templars in their heavy armour attached to her wrists as the apostate struggled against their pull.

"Please! I'm no mage! You have the wrong person!" She wailed. Miriam was quick to her belt, drawing her stiletto dagger from the loop and the more brutal yet just as effective S hook from within the secretive padding on her waist. She launched herself over the chairs, her weapons poised when they successfully had managed to push her sister out of the house, throwing her into the dirt.

Bethany stood shakily, her cheeks blotched and streaked with wetness. "Bethany! No! You can't take her! I won't let you take my baby!" Her Mother was screeching, sobbing into Aveline's chest as the bulwark woman rubbed up her back.

Miriam may have failed Carver but she would not fail Bethany. "Oh gentlemen!" She cooed, her voice cloyingly sweet as she stomped, a predator with her prey well in sights. For all their merits the bucket-helmed men did not visibly flinch beneath her gaze. They were going to die painfully.

One of them stopped in his tracks. Rabbit meet wolf! "Ser, stand down. This apostate is in our custody now." He sounded.

"Good afternoon Sers!" Miriam whipped her gaze momentarily to see that damned Warden-Mage from Ostagar straight-backed and moving toward her direction. Maybe she could dupe these fools into taking him rather than her sister. Or he could repay his rudeness by helping her slaughter these bastards. His pale eyes saw her and acknowledged the presence of someone else with their eyes set on the Templars, but as a superior predator. She narrowed her own blue eyes at him, trying to contest that. These were hers! He looked back toward the Templar that had Bethany by the wrists again, struggling and weeping as he had smote her as she was outside. "Good day for apostate hunting isn't it?"

It sickened Miriam that their neighbours, friends to her Mother watched or ignored the fracas. Uncaring bastards. Then she saw two figures who were watching, watching and growling at the Templars like rabid dogs. Both tall, as if hewn larger by a tenth than normal humans, muscular warriors covered in strange tattoos and odd fur, wool and studded leather armour. "Move on."

The Warden-Mage smirked, a look of triumph crossing his features. The Wardens had taken Carver, had lead him to his death. "I happen to be a mage too." No shit... was it the staff that gave it away? "But I'm also Commander Lucien of the Grey Wardens. I think you know the drill. I hereby conscript the lady you're dragging into my order, yada yada yada. Hand her over." He smiled, revealing stained, chipped teeth and brushed his long black hair off his face.

Miriam could have gut him then and there if not for the presence of the two bodyguards for lack of a better word that stood near the Warden-Mage. The brief, rebellious, thought that they might be Wardens too, that Carver might have survived that massacre at Ostagar flashed in her head, making her lose focus. Damn this! "How'd we know you're a Grey Warden? They all died in Ostagar." One of the Templars asked with a sniff.

Miriam gripped her S hook harder, moving forward. She'd get rid of them the old fashioned way. They were just leaving Lothering anyway.

Commander Lucien, as the mage had named himself snorted. "Ha! I could ask Teyrn Loghain... you know - the imposing man over there with the rest of my order if I'm correct in my status as a Grey Warden." He gestured with his head backwards, crossing his arms and widening his stance.

Miriam followed where the Templars looked, barely managing not to seethe when she caught sight of the mountain of Veridium armour that was Teyrn Loghain. His face and legendary armour were well known. She flinched. There was a man that would see her strung up for scarping at Ostagar, a man who would know the face of Aveline, one of King Cailan's guardsmen who had failed and ran too. They were deserters, their death warrants were all but signed. "Miriam, come back from the door." Aveline came up behind her, her Mother rushing out to eclipse Bethany into a tight hug.

"You cannot take this apostate! The Chantry-" One of the Templars started.

"The Templars have no power against the Right of Conscription. I thought I wouldn't have to explain but it seems I've met with imbeciles! I could conscript the Divine if I were so inclined! Be thankful I'm not dragging you into the fight against the darkspawn, I haven't use for fodder!" Commander Lucien snorted, the dark circles around his eyes were very ageing but there was a mage that could stand up for himself without fear of reprisals.

"Take the apostate. Maker's luck on you Warden. I think you'll need it." The Templar that had dared stay in her house glowered as they stomped past.

"Don't Hawke. You can't fight the Right of Conscription." Aveline put her hand on Miriam's shoulder. She twisted, the S hook just under the ginger warrior's chin. It did not pierce the skin but she was bloody close!

"Don't you dare! They took my brother and I'll be damned if they take my sister!" She hissed between her teeth. The peace she had found from the strange Qunari giant was long gone, uncontrollable rage boiling into her mind. Aveline's face became a mask of calm, green eyes boring into her as if she wasn't a quick tug away from death.

"Fighting doesn't solve all your problems. You don't want to fight me Hawke." Her tone was so commanding that Miriam backed down, snorting angrily like a mare. Maker how did she do that? She grit her teeth.

Then she stole a glance back towards the Commander of the Grey Wardens helping Bethany stand back up with the help of the towering silent warriors. She bit her tongue as Bethany sent a soured glance at her and said her goodbyes to Mother, seemingly at peace with this. Maybe... maybe Bethany wanted to follow Carver's death, find some sort of purpose in doing something he had wanted.

She watched and listened at the crack in the door as Aveline took her Mother to the kitchen, promising tea and a listening wall for her. Miriam was more proactive that that, she'd find out what these bastard Grey Wardens wanted with Bethany, maybe they'd just let her get back to her life now the Templars were gone.

"Am I really going to be a Grey Warden?" Bethany asked, wiping her face with the backs of her hands and sniffing. Miriam was ready if this sodding Commander was serious.

"Any apostate with skill enough to go free for... how old are you? Twenty?" The Commander seemed to smile, quite genuinely now threats seemed to be gone.

"Eighteen."

"Eighteen years is skilled enough and will get more powerful against the darkspawn." He took a deep breath in, smiling wider. "Smell that? It's freedom from ever having a templar look funny at you again. You'll get used to the darkspawn." And that sentence gave her pause. Ever having the Templars on her back? What right did Miriam have to take that chance from her sister?

"They're little more than animals with swords," The female warrior that gave Aveline a run for her money in the imposing muscle stakes said softly. "You will also find that most of us are very happy to have one of the shaman amongst us." Miriam had heard that word before, around the Chasind she, Mother and Father had hid with for a few months while Mother was pregnant with the twins... they'd used that word for the mages.

"So what happened there?" A blond warrior walked up to the Commander, he was tan, with a caring smile towards Bethany who still looked like a wet weekend.

"Meet the newest member of the Grey Wardens. This is Alistair, and I'm sure you recognise Loghain over there. The two barbarians behind you are Dyrfinna and Thorvald." The two tall warriors growled at that. Miriam could have chuckled at the Commander, obviously they didn't approve of being called barbarians. They did look fairly barbaric though.

"Did I just hear you correctly? You conscripted my bloody sister?" Miriam froze when she heard that voice and saw the familiar figure cut his way with choppy strides past the blond Warden. He didn't see her peeking from the front door but her mouth went dry, her fingers shaking. The Commander nodded dumbly. Then Carver managed to knock the Commander down with one right hook to the eye. Oh, Bethany would be fine! Carver was alive!

The weight of looking after her two siblings seemed to instantly disappear, a smile flitting on her features. Her brother and sister would be fine, not with just the fact no Templars could harm them but the fact that Carver was alive. Carver would protect his twin with his life if needs be, there wouldn't be anyone else Miriam would ever charge with looking after her. She closed the door softly and leaned back into it, sighing happily.

"How can you even smile at a time like this?" Her Mother snapped, cheeks pink and the cup of tea rattling in it's saucer as she came out the kitchen. Aveline shot a look of warning and confusion her way.

"Because... because both my siblings are fine now. Bethany and Carver will look after each other." Miriam breathed, the tide rises, the tide falls, but the sea is changeless. There is nothing to struggle against. Oh how right the Sten was!

The much repaired teacup and saucer fell to the ground, hot tea splashing over the floor. Her Mother sank to her knees. "Oh Maker... I prayed! I prayed so hard! But they're still gone!"

"They'd have to go someday Mistress Leandra, at least your children are safe." Aveline soothed, smiling. Miriam sighed again, safe might not have been the word she'd use but in safe hands.

"Come on, we just need to finish packing and waiting for Ser Wesley then we can start moving." Miriam chivvied, the weight was just gone.

"About that..." Aveline rubbed the back of her neck awkwardly. "How about I clean up this mess and we have a talk about it..."


End file.
